The UWI Mona Herbarium hosts over 37 000 species of flora collected since the 1880's up to present around Jamaica and the West Indies, and it serves as a valuable resource for scientific research, education, and conservation. The Jamaican Collection is further subdivided into flowering plants of Jamaica, including dicotyledons and monocotyledons, as well as pteridophytes, bryophytes, and lichens. The physical Herbarium provides resources for teaching diverse botany courses in the Department of Life Science. Currently, our aim is to preserve, inventory and digitize the collection for future generations.

In 2009, the Jamaican Virtual Herbarium was created through a partnership between the University of the West Indies and the Institute of Jamaica. The project initially focused on cataloging the collections of W. M. Harris at UWI and G. R. Proctor at IOJ, with a particular emphasis on 10 plant families and subfamilies, resulting in 1,638 specimen records. These include Annonaceae, Bignoniaceae, Caesalpiniaceae (Caesalpinioideae of APG II 2003 Fabaceae), Euphorbiaceae, Lauraceae, Mimosaceae (Mimosoideae of APG II 2003 Fabaceae), Moraceae, Myrtaceae, Fabaceae s.s. (Faboideae or Papilionoideae of APG II 2003 Fabaceae s. l.), and Rubiaceae. Record for the UWI Mona Herbarium will be captured on this portal for the open access and use for research purposes. We acknowledge Dr. Philipe Rose and the Institute of Jamaica, with funding from the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica and logistical support from Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens, for making this data available.